nd the trodden down.

In this hasty and imperfect sketch we cannot enter into the details of
that cruel disregard of Irish rights which was manifested by a Reformed
Parliament, convoked, to use the language of William IV., "to ascertain
the sense of the people." It is perhaps enough to say that O'Connell's
indignant refusal to receive as full justice the measure of reform meted
out to Ireland was fully justified by the facts of the case. The Irish
Reform Bill gave Ireland, with one third of the entire population of the
United Kingdoms, only one sixth of the Parliamentary delegation. It
diminished instead of increasing the number of voters; in the towns and
cities it created a high and aristocratic franchise; in many boroughs it
established so narrow a basis of franchise as to render them liable to
corruption and abuse as the rotten boroughs of the old system. It threw
no new power into the hands of the people; and with no little justice has
O'Connell himself termed it an act to restore to power the Orange
ascendancy in Ireland, and to enable a faction to trample with impunity
on the friends of reform and constitutional freedom. (Letters to the
Reformers of Great Britain, No. 1.)

In May, 1832, O'Connell commenced the publication of his celebrated
_Letters to the Reformers of Great Britain_. Like Tallien, before the
French convention, he "rent away the veil" which Hume and Atwood had only
partially lifted. He held up before the people of Great Britain the new
indignities which had been added to the long catalogue of Ireland's
wrongs; he appealed to their justice, their honor, their duty, for
redress, and cast down before the Whig administration the gauntlet of his
country's defiance and scorn. There is a fine burst of indignant Irish
feeling in the concluding paragraphs of his fourth letter:--

"I have demonstrated the contumelious injuries inflicted upon us by this
Reform Bill. My letters are long before the public. They have been
unrefuted, uncontradicted in any of their details. And with this case of
atrocious injustice to Ireland placed before the reformers of Great
Britain, what assistance, what sympathy, do we receive? Why, I have got
some half dozen drivelling letters from political unions and political
characters, asking me whether I advise them to petition or bestir
themselves in our behalf!

"Reformers of Great Britain! I do not ask you either to petition or be
silent. I do not ask you to petitio